Handcuffs (28 page)

Plus, drugs and alcohol are pretty much staples at these parties. I have a fear of drugs and alcohol that I suspect stems from my inability to lose my self-control. I don’t like puking or drooling or dancing around looking like a fool. I don’t particularly like people who do puke, drool, or dance like fools either.

It’s not inconceivable that he might be at this party. He goes to most of them. When we were together we often just spent Saturday nights at his house. He never really pushed me to go to parties, and it just became one of those things we didn’t share. One of many things, possibly. There have been rumors lately, stupid rumors about him and about Kandace, and he’s been distracted. Ever since . . . well, he was exasperated before, now he’s distracted. I know it’s barely been a day, but what if I’m not good enough and he just doesn’t want me anymore? Could I be any more pathetic? I try to keep my brain focused, but it’s really hard.

“Where is this stupid party?” I ask, trying to distract myself from the thoughts that won’t stop going round and round in my head.

“I don’t know. This neighborhood sucks,” Raye says. We’ve left the affluent suburbs behind. The houses here are rectangles and squares, the cars are older, the shrubs need to be trimmed. This doesn’t look like any Allenville party I’ve heard of. The ones the kids talk about are usually at big places with swimming pools and wine cellars and stuff. Raye is making a face, and I wonder if she will react this way if I have to move to some dumpy neighborhood with square shrubs.

“This must be it. Now, where to park?” There are cars everywhere. Cars upon cars upon cars. Raye pulls into a neighboring yard, and we walk toward the music.

I knock on the door, because that’s what I always do before I go into a place. The girl who answers has serious dental issues—her mouth is full of braces—and her brown hair is sort of wispy and falls all around her face. She looks familiar. I know she goes to our school, but she looks even more familiar than that, like I should know her.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi. I’m Alicia.”

“This is your party, right?” Raye asks.

“Yeah.” Alicia doesn’t look all that happy.

“C’mon, let’s see what’s up.” Raye pulls me inside. Four girls are sitting at a cheap Formica table in this little square dining area. I can hear people laughing in the living room, but Marion’s group have the kitchen all to themselves.

“Oh no.” Ellen Birch glances up, sees us, and makes a face. “Look who’s here.” The horror on their faces would almost be comical—well, I guess it is comical, except that my heart is beating really fast and I feel nauseous. It might be a bad idea to eat mall cookies and drink iced cappuccinos when you’re a passenger in Raye’s car. Sometimes I get a little sick.

“Don’t trust your man, huh?” Marion Henessy must really hate me. Real true hate. But her saying that proves that he is here. This makes me happy and worried at the same time. Happy because I can’t wait to see him, need to see him. Worried because, well, he’s here.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Is he messing around with Kandace Freemont? Is that what’s happening? Do not throw up mall cookies, white chocolate macadamia nut vomit all over the floor, no way. I take a really deep breath and squint at them through the smoke.

“Right. You show up at the one party of the year where we have this thing planned for your boyfriend, and you don’t know what’s going on.”

“Zara Thorpe told us we should get over here.” Raye can sound really tough when she wants to. I’m glad she’s on my side.

“You want to make a wager, Prescott?” I’m looking into the eyes of Ellen Birch, Kandace Freemont’s sleazy-ass best friend. “I’m betting that Kandace gets what she wants before tonight is over.”

“How much?” I ask. Did I say that out loud?

“One thousand dollars,” she says.

I hesitate. I know they don’t have a thousand dollars, and neither do we, and just the idea of this kind of a bet makes me feel sick. Plus, I suspect that they are becoming aware of my money problems and that if they find a way to twist this so that I owe them money, I will never live it down.

“She doesn’t trust him,” Marion says.

“No, she doesn’t have a thousand dollars. Have you seen the for-sale sign in her yard? Her family is broke. Pretty soon she’ll be living in some dump like this,” Ellen says. I flinch for Alicia, the girl who lives here, but she’s hovering in the background. She actually seems glad to have these bitches here.

“I’m good for the money. We’ll take your wager,” Raye says. One thousand dollars. That’s how much they said he got for being the one, the first one. These guys aren’t overly creative.

“Okay. Alicia, go downstairs and open the other basement window.” Alicia moves quickly to obey the great and obnoxious Marion.

“If you guys say anything or do anything to mess this up, the money is forfeit,” Marion says. She and her friends go over in the corner and whisper for a few minutes. Raye picks up a Coke and a plastic cup. She splashes a little bit of Coke, and a healthy dose of whiskey, over a couple of ice cubes.

“You want something, Parker?” a girl asks. I don’t recognize her.

I shake my head.

“Everybody take your places!” Marion herself grabs my arm and nearly wrenches it out of the socket.

“Why are we going outside?” I ask. All the girls make shushing noises, they’re like a flock of stupid chickens. I swear, Marion’s little group of friends are the most annoying people I’ve ever met.

The great one, Marion herself, leads me to this little rectangular window.

“You can watch through here,” she says. “Stay down where they can’t see you.” I kneel in the mud. “This place is just crap,” Marion mutters. She kneels beside me.

There are maybe thirty kids in the basement. He’s sitting on the couch, with his ankles crossed loosely, smoking a joint.

He’s wearing gray pants that are a little baggy and a black shirt. He turns to another guy, says something, laughs, then passes the joint on. He looks delicious. Watching him, I can’t believe that I felt let down or that I hated the way it felt some of the time when he was touching me. He is so perfect, and I’m so lucky to have him. And these things get better, right?

Somebody—Alicia?—turns off the music. Several people stand up and walk off, probably to get more beer. A girl spills something on the floor and somebody hands her a roll of paper towels.

I’m staring so hard at him that I barely sense that Marion has turned toward me, that she’s looking at me instead of in the window.

“You weren’t supposed to be here tonight,” she says, and I can’t tell if she’s angry or apologetic or what. “I didn’t really mean for you to be here to see this,” she says. This is probably the closest thing to an apology I will ever get from Marion. She didn’t even apologize when we were in preschool and she gave my favorite doll a makeover complete with a new punk hairstyle and permanent-marker eye makeup. Even though her mom made her apologize, she still didn’t, not really.

In the smoky basement Kandace Freemont appears through a door. She was obviously already there, waiting. She’s wearing this tiny little skirt, and this tiny little sweater, and though you can’t see any details through this tiny little basement window, several guys turn to stare. My guess is that Kandace looks pretty hot. She’s an attractive girl. I can admit that. I know she’s heading for my boyfriend. He’s like a magnet to her. I wonder what he feels for Kandace? There has to be something, even if he’s not showing it. Would she keep throwing herself at him with no encouragement at all?

She walks toward him very slowly. He turns toward her, and I can see him take her in, from head to toe. His gaze is slow. He’s so relaxed, so comfortable in his own skin. I’m having trouble breathing again. I strain forward, trying to hear what she’s saying, but I can’t make it out. His voice is louder.

“Jesus Christ, Kandace. Can’t I go anyplace in this town without you showing up?” He stands up. She reaches for him, puts both arms out, like a supplicant, a beggar. He pushes her away. “What part of ‘I don’t want you’ don’t you understand?”

I stand up. They may want to keep watching, but I don’t. My leg aches from the way it’s been bent, and my palm is grooved from holding myself up on the concrete. I didn’t want to see this. I didn’t want to witness this. It’s disgusting. I am singing inside, dancing on air. I maintain my air of disdain, though I want so badly to smile.

“What was the point of that?” I ask Marion as I pry a tiny rock out of one of the grooves in my hand. “I thought Kandace was your friend.”

“We were hoping he would throw her down on the couch.” Marion looks straight at me as she says this. “We had the camera set up just for you, so you could watch later. If that didn’t happen, we were hoping to get him out of her system once and for all. That’s why we we’re calling it an intervention. Kandace needs to move on. The whole thing is annoying.” She can say that again.

I see Raye with Ian on the couch. He’s trying to get her to kiss him, nibbling at her, but she’s too interested in the unfolding drama to get wrapped up in him.

Marion commands her minion, “Get Kandace up here. This won’t be effective unless we confront her immediately.”

“How do you know about this intervention stuff? From your creepy stalker brother?”

“Do you know how many times my brother drove your sister to the hospital when she drank too much?” Marion’s voice is all shaky and weird. I would feel sorry for her, but that would be pretty stupid when she seems so determined to ruin my life.

“My sister would never get in a car with your brother.” Why does she always try to make Paige the bad one?

I really should just ignore her. She shakes her head at me, but then turns away because someone has dragged a bawling Kandace up the stairs. The girls gather around her, patting her, giving her hugs, consoling her. I suspect I’ll never hear another word about the thousand-dollar wager. It was all just Marion’s crowd acting tough.

I slip unseen down the dark, creaky basement stairs.

The basement is smoky. Somebody cranks the music back up, and people are talking, laughing, socializing. He’s turned away from me, and there’s a frown on his face. He shifts, and my heart jumps into my mouth.
What if he’s planning to get up and go after Kandace?
I find myself picturing them in an embrace and it makes me physically sick. I put my hand on his shoulder.

He turns quickly, almost angrily, as if he’s offended by being touched. Then he sees me, and a slow smile spreads across his face.

“I thought you were grounded, Prescott.” He takes my hand in his. I yank my hand away. I didn’t mean to, I just, for some crazy reason, did. “Parker?” He pulls me down on the couch. He’s such a flawless kisser, and I just relax and let him kiss me.

I forget where we are. I forget about our audience. I forget that Marion straight-out told me there was a video camera in this room. His thumbs are hooked into the sides of my jeans, pulling me into him. This could be much better than things were before, much, much better. Everything feels so perfectly right between us all of a sudden. Not awkward or forced or anything. Not like it was. The whole interruption thing and the realtor, and knowing that Paige could come home any time, it was too much. We should’ve just watched a movie.

His mouth is all over mine, and it feels wonderful, but there is this distracting snuffling sound. I break away and make sudden jarring eye contact with Kandace, who is standing across the room crying into something that looks like a kitchen towel. Looks like she has broken away from Marion and was maybe pretending she wanted a beer, just to see him again.

“C’mon, Kandace.” Marion is behind her. She sounds pissed. It isn’t often that one of her little lackeys doesn’t do exactly what she says. Believe me, I know.

“Let’s get out of here.” He pulls me to my feet.

We go upstairs. I don’t see Raye anywhere. As I walk into the kitchen, holding his hand, Marion’s friends watch me from the Formica table, which seems to be the base of operations for all their evil plans.

He walks away from me, into the living room, where some guys are drinking beer and arm-wrestling. He leans against a wall and looks bored. Can’t he see I need him right now? I thought we were leaving. I stand in the doorway behind him, awkward and alone.

I can see that he has totally tuned out, turned off by all the drama. He gives a little head jerk, telling me to come on in and sit with him, but for some reason I can’t. I open the screen door and walk out onto the narrow front porch.

Raye and Ian are still in the basement, I think. I walk outside. If I walk down to where Raye parked, I can get some Tylenol out of Raye’s glove compartment. Did she lock her car? I can’t remember and I’m just kind of turning circles in the driveway, not sure what to do, when I see my dad’s Jeep pull up. There’s no doubt that it’s his; I can see the way the left headlight kind of wavers, and I can see the stupid air freshener he hangs from the rearview mirror, and I can even see the glint from his glasses.

What is my dad’s Jeep doing in the driveway of this house all the way across town from our neighborhood? For a second I’m sure my dad has come to rescue me. I open the door and get in. I see myself reflected back at me in his glasses for a second before I realize it isn’t my dad driving the Jeep at all. It’s Kyle Henessy. He has his cell phone against his ear.